The tremendous explosion in the popularity of drinking wine in the 1980s and 1990s through the world has brought about the establishment of dozens if not hundreds of small to medium sized restaurants and cafes with extensive and creative wine and other beverage lists. Sales of wines, beers, champagnes, brandies, appertifs and other beverages comprise a very large percentage of overall gross revenue for such establishments. In all metropolitan areas it is not unusual to find an extensive wine list containing between 50 and 100 different such beverages in stock and for sale.
Sales of wine, beer or other beverages at restaurants typically include sales of full bottles, glasses or flights. Full service wine merchants offer flights of wine or other drinks as a way of educating their customers as to the differences in different types of wines as well as to enhance revenues of such. Customers can select individual glasses of wine, or they can select a flight of wines. A flight of wines consists of about four glasses containing about 1.5 ounces of wine each. A flight can consist of 2 or 3 or 5 or 6 or more wines as well. Often flights of wine are given names descriptive of the wines they contain, such as "bold Chardonnay flight" or "Spanish flight". By ordering a flight of wines, with the names of the various wines which make up the flight listed on a menu or side card, customers, wine or other tasters of beverages can sample a larger number of wines or other beverages more conveniently.
FIG. 1 is an isometric view of a flight board 100 of the prior art. In the past, presentation of wine or beer in flights was facilitated using a standard tray or board. Unfortunately, glasses 50 slide on flat trays and can knock together having unfortunate results. Such boards 100 with small grooves or indentations 102 inset into the top surface have been used to facilitate service of a number of glasses 50 of liquid, generally wine glasses which may tend to be somewhat top heavy anyway, but are less than adequate. Such wine or drink boards 100 would generally be left at the table, an aesthetically undesirable feature, and lifting and setting down the loaded boards is continually fraught with tippage hazzard. And the need to find sufficient table space.
Not only does service of a flight of drinks typically involve a great risk of tippage and/or spillage, but other drawbacks of such presentation are inherent. Since rather than serve a singe 6 ounce glass a flight might consist of four--1.5 once servings. Therefore, increased service time is inherent with typical flight service. As importantly, server and/or customer confusion is also a problem with flight service. Unless the glasses are kept in a certain spatial orientation, and such can be remembered during the process of pour from bottle to placement on the bar to collection by a server to delivery to a table, the identity of the wine or other drink may be forgotten or confused.
Therefore, it would be advantageous to provide a method and apparatus for service of a flight of beverages, such as about two to about four or more wine glasses, to avoid the problems associated with the prior art,